


Home Front

by Thimblerig



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Care and Feeding, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26606896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Tony Stark finally meets Peggy Carter's husband. It goes... well, it goes.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Home Front

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anathema Device (notowned)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notowned/gifts).



“Y’know,” Tony drawled, “if you changed your hair-colour you’d look just like Captain America.”

Grant Carter looked amused. “Maybe my wife has a type.”

“Not gonna lie,” Tony said, leaning to look past the big man into the wide front parlour of the old-fashioned house, “I thought Aunt Peggy’s type was a Missus.”

“I’m shy.” Carter - a tall man, a big man, but muffled in chequered shirt and cardigan and grandpa-pants, shifted with grace to let the teenager in. Tony strutted inside, his bantam chest half-drowned in an MIT t-shirt, but his elbows out and head high like a champion rooster. It had taken solid investigative work - half a day even! - to track down Aunt Peggy’s home address, and he wasn’t going to miss this for anything.

“Lemonade?” Carter padded in stocking feet down the wooden hall to the kitchen at the back.

“Coffee,” Tony said, head turning from side to side. “Black like my bitter heart.”

“Hm.” Tony heard the click of a gas ring being turned on, the gurgle of water, the clink of a kettle being set down. Carter came back with a tray, covered with glasses and a jug of the soft stuff, bedewed with condensation. “You can hydrate while the water’s heating.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Carter and Jarvis would get along just swell, Tony imagined. Maybe they shared recipes for beeswax polish on the down-low. His head swivelled again. Books and bookshelves everywhere. Heavy tomes of legal precedent shared space with mimeographed chapbooks of budget recipes and guides to managing co-op soup kitchens and credit unions. There were a few framed pictures - people, some landscapes… one blurred shot of what might be the back of Carter’s head, next to Aunt Peggie’s gentle smile as they danced cheek to cheek, set beside a windup gramophone. A signed letter from Martin Luther King was framed in wood and gilt. “Oh my god,” Tony breathed. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Aunt Peggy, terror of Alphabet Agencies the world over, got married to a _hippy.”_

Carter lifted one greying eyebrow, a plate of corned beef sandwiches in his large hands. “I’m an artist. Commercial illustration.”

Tony zoomed in on a stack of hardcovers, tiny with jewel-bright dust-covers. He leaped to his feet and plucked one out, eyes flicking to the illustration on the front, then a pen-and-ink portrait of a younger, laughing Peggy on the wall. “I know this series,” he said shrewdly, “this is the _Kid’s Life_ series. _Kid’s Life in Brooklyn, Kid’s Life in Hong Kong, Kid’s Life in Saigon._ That can’t have won you favours when they geared up for the Nam.”

“Well,” said Carter, eyes impish, “what’s the point in marrying the terror of Alphabet Agencies the world over if I can’t mess around a bit?”

“Hm.”

“Do you really want to know why?”

Tony gave a dismissive shrug but kept his ears pricked as he browsed the shelves through a stack of physics texts. Olds always liked to expound.

“Once I thought the best way to serve my country was to pick up a gun and march. I wasn’t wrong - it was a time to try men’s souls - but it wasn’t all the answer either. There was a time I had to choose again, and I did.”

“Very profound,” Tony agreed solemnly. “I’ll write it down and study it every day. Promise. Maybe get some ink.”

Carter laughed. “You don’t ever change.”

“Aunt Peggy talks about me?”

“Of course she does.”

“Huh.”

“Now sit. Eat. Finish your sandwiches and I’ll get you that coffee.”

“I’m not going to ask you,” Carter said carefully when Tony was back in the old-lady-plush armchair, “why you’re here in the middle of semester -”

“I got expelled,” Tony said cheerfully.

“Ah.”

“So, yeah, Jarvis is at a funeral in the old country and Dad’d just say he told me so and he’s not gonna buy me outta trouble again, and Mom’d be all -” Tony waved his hand, because ‘tight around the eyes’ was difficult to explain - “and, yeah. Went on a roadtrip. Figured I’d say Hi to Aunt Peggy, shoot the shit -”

“Language,” said Carter, with a long-suffering air. Then, “There’s a spare bedroom you can use -”

_“Mi casa es su casa!”_

“- for as long as you need it. But. I need you to call your parents. Tell them you’re safe. Tell them that you love them. You don’t have to tell them where if you don’t want; this is a blocked number.”

Tony waved it off. “They don’t care.”

A bakelite telephone smacked down in front of him, the twirling cord stretched precarious across the room. “Tell them. That you love them.” Carter softened. “One day you’ll understand.” His mouth quirked. 

* * *

Steve Rogers watched young Tony Stark mumble into the receiver, brief, as gruffly effacing as any teenage boy. “... Yeah. Love you too, Mom,” he muttered, looking at the wall, and put it down absently. In his distraction Steve nudged the sandwiches towards him and the boy ate almost half before his eyelids drooped, delicate over the under-eye bruises of three days awake. Young Tony was tiny, his elbows and ears sticking out, and some last traces of baby fat rounding his compact bones. Young as he was, he stank of alcohol and weed. Whatever had brought the boy here - and how did he find this place? - the need for sanctuary was real. So.

As the golden afternoon light dimmed into evening, Steve eased young Tony’s sneakers off and draped a crochet blanket from Mrs Pulowski across the street over his slight shoulders.

The Starks would die tonight. Shot down on a lonely Long Island road.

Or… maybe not. Maybe it would be at the party, or a different road, or next week. Steve had sworn to protect the timeline, but there had been enough small changes that he was unable to predict fine details any more. It might be any Hydra assassin who went after them, civilians that they were. Bucky might -

For all he knew, assassins were after _Tony_ right now, to rip the Stark dynasty out root to bud. Bucky might be _here_ tonight, who could say? He might -

Bucky.

Steve promised to protect the timeline.

He had sworn to guard the children.

As young Tony slept on, Steve went back to the kitchen and finished the washing up. He started a casserole in the oven for their dinner that night. He paced back and forth, on stocking feet so he wouldn’t disturb the boy.

Silently, he wept.

  
  


_These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier  
and the sunshine patriot will, _ _in this crisis, shrink from the  
service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves  
the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell,  
is not easily conquered…_

(Thomas Paine, 1776)


End file.
